Hijacking Hershey, homeopathic bullying, Cole cont

Change.org continues to demonstrate how consumer activists are using social media to hold companies accountable, hijacking Hershey’s s’mores-themed photo contest on Facebook and asking Hershey to buy chocolate made without child and slave labor. More than 15,000 people have joined the Change.org campaign calling on the company to fight child labor in the cocoa industry.
One of the things that has always struck me as a little odd is the fact that companies selling homeopathic “remedies” can even be considered for “ethical retailer” awards. Marketing useless products to gullible people doesn’t seem particularly ethical to me, and this kind of behavior—a libel lawsuit against an Italian blogger who criticized homeopathic products—makes the industry’s lack of any kind of ethical compass even more apparent.
Fox News reports that “some” (by which it means an anti-choice group called the Pro Life Action Group) are offended by Kenneth Cole’s “What Do You Stand For?” advertising campaign, which asks a number of provocative questions about political and social issues.
A new study suggests that some people are way too invested in their favorite brands. “People with high ‘self-brand connections’ were more likely to perceive personal psychological injury when their brand was attacked, while those same people were likely to gloss over or ignore negative news concerning their brand.”
Buried in this article on political candidate’s desire to brand their top donors is a complaint from the Campaign Finance Institute that labeling top fundraisers as Patriots, as Rick Perry does, “implies that your opponents’ donors are not patriotic.” Actually, it seems to me that what it really implies is that your own smaller donors are not partiotic.